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Friday, October 27, 2006

I don't know about you, but I get fired up about stuff.Being a fifth generation Australian, with a strong connection to place, and an acute awareness of how much damage the DDT, dieldrin and other noxious crap we spilt around our home has impacted on the environment, I now feel the urge to correct and recover.It's a tough assignment, but everyone has to do their best if we are to leave this place in a fit condition for the next gens and the poor creatures trying to eke a living in the fast declining bushland.There's much to be done.Some of it's personal.Some of it's spiritual.Some of it's political.Some of it's communal.The first two are very personal.The second two are public.If the third is of interest but you don't want to march in the street, then a petition might be the way to go.Get Up, Action for Australia is a body I have some respect for.Check it out.There's a link on the right.(I have marched in the street but find it disconcerting. All the yelling and the sloganeering unnerves me. Unless there are drums. If the march can be danced, I'm in.)Have a look.Take the time.We all need all the help we can get.

Monday, October 23, 2006

Bugger!Some days I wake up and I wonder where I've been, not because I have a heavy hangover, or I got so doped up the night before I have no idea who I am or the other details of my immediate life.No, it's because I am an old baby booming bastard who came through the sixties and revolted and smoked dope and dreamt of changing the world and did my best to scream and rant at the established and controlling order and in some small way I believed that I had, along with Danny the Red, Richard Neville, Germane Greer, Carole King, Richard Pryor and who knows who else.But it seems I haven't.We all failed.Ok, a few lucky women in the Western World have a better rate of pay.And in some areas they get respect.But....A lot of men got confused and remain so and can't imagine what it is they are supposed to be doing in a world which now seems run by women on better rates of pay then their mothers.It's crap, of course.But it's not the only place of confusion.What about North Korea?And India?And Pakistan?And Israel?All members of the club with the ability to blow the shit and all other bodily fluids out of the entire planet.What's the point of that?Why do we need the ability more than once?And why is it that the most powerful nation the fully rounded planet has ever seen seems to think that it is the only one with the right to destroy us all and why is it that it continues to drive around in four-wheel drives past electronic signage pointing the way to vacuous, soulless, nothingness while so many of the rest of us can't find a decent glass of water, or a handful of fresh fruit?So what about global warming?What's the point of that?Ok, it all looks pretty miserable.Tell you what, if you didn't have a sense of humour, bugger, where would you be?

Thursday, October 19, 2006

Can you believe what we waste in the West?And when I say West, I mean the entire western world, as well as the entire West of this vast continent we call Australia.Rampant consumerism brings with it random debris. Enough to sink continents.I'm a walker and when I go walking, on a beach, along a road, I spend an amount of time picking up rubbish left by others who went that way before me.It's happened in Israel, in New Zealand, in Holland, in England, in, yes, even, in Switzerland.The picture on the left is Anzac Cove, Turkey, the scene for a disgraceful dumping by Aussies in 2005 while there to celebrate a glorious defeat. This year those gathered were much better behaved, but I'll bet many of them managed to dump stuff elsewhere.In Western Australia recently a major recycling plant closed down. Why? Because it was making money? No, economic rationalism.And already this western third of Australia is a slack third when it comes to recycling, but a champion third when it comes to dumping.It's not just that we're different to the other two thirds, or that we think we're Texan, we just don't think enough about the consequences of our obsessive consumerism, coupled with our rampant economic growth, it's debris and our responsibility to the folk we're leaving it all to.My view is that if taxpayers, individually or collectively, are not prepared to take responsibility for their rubbish, then the government must, which means taxpayers will.Either way, it's gotta be done.I once stood for election to the Australian Federal Parliament on a deep sewerage platform: the dismantling of it.Voters laughed at me and rightly so, I was a bloody idiot, but like all fools I had a point: society's problems multiplied when people were relieved of responsibility for their own shit!

It's time, I think, to take full responsibility.If we don't, Kilimanjaro will melt, Iceland will melt, oceans will heat up (doing away with whatever whales Iceland and Japan have left behind in their madness), the Maldives will sink and Manjimup, West Australia, will be too warm to grow cherries.This is a disaster.You cannot have a Cherry Festival in a town that does not grow cherries.Please, for the sake of the folk who have worked their guts to the bone to create a magnificent festival that already equals major cherry festivals around the world, please, sign a petition.You can find it on this web site.http://sunrisefamily.com.au/current/petition/index.phpLot's of fabulous, gorgeous, darling, media type celebrity airheads have already signed, but don't let that put you off.Go on, sign.I dare you.

Wednesday, October 18, 2006

Let me make the point: Local Garlic is NOW available!Well, for those of us in the southern hemisphere and particularly in West Australia.And if you don't have any wherever you are then find yourself a supplier on Australia's fabulous west coast and place an order.At Sal and Phil's, my local fruit and veg retailers, they have two boxes brimming with the delight.That's Sal wearing a garlic necklace.Not only has Sal got plenty of locally grown garlic, his entire shop is brimming with local fruit and veg.Am I in the pay of the garlic munchers?No.Why then am I into garlic and cherries and other such fruit and veg?Because, dear blog fancier, I am a fanatical, locally-grown fruit and veg person who grew up on a fruit and veg farm in the lower south west of this magnificent fast disappearing state called West Australia.Indeed, I grow my own garlic and eat it every day.Not mine, it's not ready yet, but right now I'm eating some I bought from Misters Fruit and Veg, Sal and Phil, two Australian-Italian dudes who not only know garlic when they sniff it, they stick it where folk can see it.It's purple in colour, not white, and is full of all the necessaries you expect to find in a knob of the genre.Just so you know I'm not alone, International Garlic Research recently held an international conference at The Free University of Berlin.It was the 6th International Congress on Phytotherapy, in conjunction with the European Scientific Co-operative for Phytotherapy.Phytotherapy, by the way, is all about the study of plants and herbs for medicinal purposes.So there.Go get it.Eat it.And keep it cool and dark.You might want to take a look at this book.

Oh, you might be thinking: "Garlic stink not for me."Well, check out his site for good info: http://www.garlic.mistral.co.uk/Take a look at the above book.Some ancients once prayed to garlic.Must have been something in it.